Check on Merl.

Lilly thought it might be exciting to see what Merl was up to today, maybe he was performing a crazy experiment or performing a spell or brewing up some strange potion. She thanked Patrice before they parted in the hallway outside her room and moved up the stone steps to the upper floors of the castle. The tower was only a few floors up and then one last flight of stairs to to the top where her father's trusted advisor and master wizard lived for the past thirty years.

"Lilly! What a nice surprise! Come to see me work have you? Have I told you about the time I owned an Inn? Sit down, sit down!", Merl said with an excited pitch as Lilly entered his lab. Her eyes focused back to the old man as he began to speak, his face had about a hundred and fifty years worth of wrinkles and his long hair was as gray as the smoke that rose from the chimneys in town. He wore his same old blue robes, the front of which was covered by his three foot long beard that his pet mouse called home. The mouse, Aurthor, was currently watching the two humans talk from the pertch above the bookcase where Merl's owl, Percival, nested during the day.

"Yes, you've told that one a hundred times. You called it 'Merl-Inn' and you were eventually shut down because of a termite and rat infestation. And yes, I've come to see what've been doing all night. You woke me twice last night you know," she replyed. Lilly sat in the chair Merl had pointed to earlier and looked about his workplace to see a liabray of spell books, a pantry of odd bottled potions and ingredients, and a rack of staves with foreign runes inscribed all over each one.

"Yeah sorry about that, my dragon tongues couldn't quite agree with each other. And if it wasn't for those pesky vermin, that inn would have made me rich and I could have got myself six wives from six different lands all named Janice...", the old mage rambled.